Lissie has a knack for doing all the right things

November 29, 2013|By Allison Stewart, Special to the Tribune

(Andrew Whitton, )

Lissie (born Elisabeth Maurus) left Rock Island, Ill., after high school, made her way to Colorado, Paris and eventually to the Southern California town of Ojai, where she would launch her career as a no-frills singer-songwriter.

She drew attention for her covers of songs by Lady Gaga and Kid Cudi, released a gentle and beloved EP, "Why You Runnin'," in 2009 and made the right friends (Lenny Kravitz, Ellie Goulding) along the way. Her sophomore full-length "Back to Forever" is a big, bona fide pop-rock album made for arenas, not coffeehouses.

Some early fans have felt alienated, but they're not the only ones unhappy with Lissie: Kid Cudi, a sensitive type under the best of circumstances, took exception to her telling an interviewer that his song, "Pursuit of Happiness," felt like her song because she had covered it so often, which she didn't mean the way it sounded.

In a recent phone interview from a tour stop in Norway, where she's kind of a big deal ("Norway's the place where I feel like a rock star"), Lissie, who just turned 31, talked about her evolving sound, her alleged lack of sexiness, and the Great Cudi Twitter Kerfuffle of '13. The following is an edited transcript of that conversation.

Q: Your musical progression from your first EP to now seems really dramatic. Am I exaggerating, or do you see it that way too?

A: That's one of the things that's hard, that frustrates me. I have so much music in me, in a couple different genres. I make folk music, I make pop music, I make rock music. I feel like whatever conclusion people are going to come to based on this album being a pop-rock album, I think the quality of my lyrics is authentic and earnest. When I was writing it, I was frustrated, so maybe it's a bit more aggressive than the last album ... I don't know if it was a progression, or just indicative of a time in my life.

Q: Have you heard from early fans, who took the firstTRIM EP so personally?

A: The only thing that ever gets to me is positivity and support. Anyone who would have an opinion that wasn't positive — I think I stay pretty sheltered from opinions that aren't supportive. ... This isn't to say that I can't put out a stripped-down folk album. Maybe I will in six months. I can do whatever I want. ... I want to get to a point where I can put something like that out and let my voice do its own thing, and the people around me will leave me alone about trying to get on the radio.

Q: Katy Perry just did an interview where she talked about the pressure on female artists to be (provocative) and sexy. Do you feel that?

A: Actually, I think it was very apparent from the beginning that if I were to try to act sexy, it would be awkward and uncomfortable for everyone. There's no way I'm dancing. I never had that (pressure), because I started out as just a singer-songwriter, and my thing was bare feet and no makeup. No one I was associated with ever put that pressure on me.

Q: You sing in your song "Shameless," "I don't want to be famous/ If I got to be shameless."

A: I don't want to sound like I'm bitter, because I'm a pretty happy, balanced person. I live out in the country in California, and I have a life I live on my terms. People are fed stuff that's really soulless, and it's a shame. I've seen people who are great artists and good people start to become social climbers and start buying into all this stuff, like they need to change the way they look and go to the right parties and meet the right people and just be kind of phony. I get bummed out by it. When I wrote "Shameless," I was in a bad mood. I want my relationships to be authentic, and to feel like it's enough to work hard and have a great voice and write your own songs, and it's not just about trend and image. I do get discouraged ... but I write a song about it, and then I feel better.

Q: You got into a little scrape with Kid Cudi. What happened?

A: It was just a misunderstanding, but it was really upsetting. He had seen an interview where I said it feels like ("Pursuit of Happiness") was our song. It was a paraphrasing. ... He saw that and didn't like that, and tweeted about it. Then all his fans started tweeting me, and that was really awful. ... "You suck and you should die." It wasn't a nice feeling, to have all that hate directed at you. ... I sent him an email explaining it, and he wrote back, "I'm so sorry, I didn't realize that." I actually got to meet him through that, and I stayed in touch with him. It's kind of funny it took that whole drama for us to know and respect one another and be in contact, so it worked out. Then all his fans tweeted me back and apologized.

Q: People really turned on you.

A: It was like witnessing this dark side of human nature, waiting for something dramatic to happen so they could jump on board and join this mob of anger. They didn't even know why, they just wanted to be a part of something exciting. People would say, "You should go and die, you stupid, ugly slut." Then they'd write back and say, "I'm sorry." Because he tweeted, "If you were mean to her, you need to apologize." Within a two-hour period, people who were spewing hate at me were all, "Oh, we're cool." It was bizarre.